Research

How Much Decentralization Is Too Much? Worker Preferences Across Degrees of Decentralization (Under Review, Administrative Science Quarterly)

Decentralization is widely seen by scholars and practitioners as a liberating alternative to hierarchy that aligns with workers' preferences. Yet, a parallel stream of research emphasizes polarizing effects, documenting how decentralization attracts some individuals while repelling others. This paper considers the degree of decentralization as a latent variable that may integrate these competing perspectives. Leveraging a field study in which workers were randomly assigned to a radically decentralized structure—where hierarchical authority was eliminated—or centralized hierarchy, we find no evidence of consistently positive experiences with radical decentralization and substantial heterogeneity in responses. These findings motivated a pre-registered discrete choice experiment comparing preferences across low, moderate, and radical decentralization. We find an inverse U-shaped relationship between degree of decentralization and preference: moderate decentralization was preferred over both centralized hierarchy and radical decentralization, while preference dispersion was lowest at moderate levels and greatest at the extremes. Non-linear trade-offs between perceived autonomy and perceived support across the spectrum of decentralization help explain this pattern. These findings integrate competing theoretical perspectives on decentralization by showing that both hold within particular ranges of decentralization degrees and suggest that workers' preferences may themselves shape the viability of the most ambitious attempts to decentralize authority.

Living with Contradiction: How Organizations Maintain Their Identity Despite Ongoing Discrepancies

Maintaining organizational identity is typically understood as a process of restoring coherence, narrowing gaps between identity claims and perceived realities. Yet some degree of discrepancy between claims and reality may be an enduring feature of organizational life, raising the question of how collective belief can be sustained when discrepancies persist. Drawing on a six-year ethnography of a consulting firm whose "liberated company" identity became increasingly at odds with newcomers' experiences as the firm grew, we find that belief was sustained not by resolving discrepancies but by accommodating them. Core subgroups took on distinct identity maintenance roles—lightning rods, exemplars, and mediators—that collectively managed the symbolic and affective consequences of ongoing discrepancies, keeping the identity claim credible while containing the frustration and doubt that discrepancies generated. We theorize these roles as comprising an identity maintenance division of labor: an interdependent system through which differently positioned members distribute the work of sustaining belief across multiple sites. This paper contributes to research on organizational identity by reframing maintenance as a problem of discrepancy accommodation rather than coherence restoration, and by showing how it operates as a distributed, role-differentiated collective achievement rather than a leader-driven process. (Co-authored with Alaric Bourgoin & Alexis Laszczuk)

The Building Blocks of Decentralization: Towards an Integrative Framework For Comparative Organization Design Research (Under Review, Organization Science)

Decentralization is a foundational element of organizational design, yet existing research on the topic remains fragmented and lacks an integrative conceptual framework. Decentralization is either portrayed as a unidimensional construct that varies along a single axis or as a set of irreducible archetypal forms that are difficult to compare. In this paper, we develop a componential framework for analyzing decentralization that identifies its core building blocks: who holds influence, over what decisions, in what form, and how that influence is distributed. This framework enables systematic classification and comparison across a wide range of decentralized forms, including hybrid and emergent models. We apply the framework to existing models in the literature, revealing how they selectively emphasize different aspects of decentralization while overlooking others. We further demonstrate the framework’s integrative potential by applying it to research domains where findings about the effects of decentralization have been inconsistent, showing how disparate findings can be reconciled, and pointing to new directions for future inquiry.  In doing so, we lay the groundwork for a more cumulative, comparative, and analytically precise research agenda on decentralization in organizations (Co-authored with Trevor Young-Hyman and John Eklund)

Democratic Deviations: How Organizations Sustain Decentralization Commitments in the Face of Centralization Pressures (Administrative Science Quarterly, 2026)

Organizations that have committed to decentralizing authority can face situations in which centralized decision making is useful or necessary. However, centralization risks undermining an organization’s perceived commitment to decentralization, which can threaten employees’ motivation and commitment, as well as organizational legitimacy. Leveraging a comparative case study of four organizations that had explicitly committed to decentralize authority and that subsequently centralized authority during the COVID-19 crisis, we identify a process by which organizations can deviate from decentralization commitments while keeping those commitments in place. This process, which we call ‘‘democratic deviation,’’ involves leaders and workers collectively authorizing centralization and then leaders enacting that authority with openness and transparency. In the three of our four cases that deviated democratically, decentralization commitments were upheld. Conversely, when centralization occurred implicitly through leader fiat and was then enacted opaquely by leaders, a process we label ‘‘monocratic deviation,’’ decentralization commitments were undermined. Through this study, we develop a theory of the structural antecedents and processes of durable commitments to decentralization, prompting re-evaluation of decentralization’s assumed fragility. More broadly, our theory suggests how organizations can uphold shared commitments even when they must deviate from them in the face of situational pressures. (Co-authored with Trevor Young-Hyman)

Enacting Decentralized Authority: The Practices and Limits of Moving Beyond Hierarchy (Administrative Science Quarterly, 2024)

Decentralization as an organizing principle has drawn growing interest from scholars and practitioners because of its perceived suitability for contemporary market conditions and alignment with employees’ evolving work expectations. However, efforts to decentralize authority face significant obstacles and often end in failure. I propose that existing research on decentralization has struggled to generate insight into how such barriers can be overcome because it has treated decentralization as a static outcome imposed by organizational designers. In contrast, this article treats decentralization as a dynamic and situated achievement that must be continually enacted, and it leverages ethnographic data from a decentralization effort in order to build theory on the organizational practices that support enactments of decentralized authority. I find that successful enactments of decentralized authority were supported by practices that established clear boundaries of authority and focused collective attention on these boundaries, as well as by practices that depersonalized collective attributions of the source of authority. At the same time, the practices were difficult to sustain because they were cognitively, emotionally, and temporally demanding. Through this study, I show that decentralization is not merely a one-time structural change but an ongoing collective process that requires navigating and neutralizing the structural and psychological forces pulling organizations back toward hierarchy. (solo-authored)

Fostering Positive Relational Dynamics in Teams: The Power of Spaces and Interaction Scripts (Academy of Management Journal, 2020)

Despite well-accepted understanding that relational dynamics characterized by respect, openness and connectedness are critical for healthy team functioning, we know little about how to foster such dynamics. Drawing on observation and interview data from an intervention that fostered positive change in the relational dynamics of a global distributed team, this paper theorizes the mechanisms that enabled a move toward positive relational dynamics. We found that the intervention brought about relational changes by not only creating spaces where the team could experiment with new forms of interaction, but also by utilizing interaction scripts – concrete guidelines for interaction that specify content parameters and participation rules. We find that the combination of spaces and interaction scripts was critical for helping the team enact counter-normative forms of interpersonal sharing that led to the emergence of positive relational dynamics. While existing research has highlighted the importance of spaces for enabling positive relational change, this paper theorizes the complementary role that interaction scripts can play in the change process. These findings have implications for research on positive relationships at work, organizational change, and global and geographically dispersed teams. (Co-authored with Leslie Perlow and Melissa Mazmanian)

New Prospects for Organizational Democracy?: How the Joint Pursuit of Social and Financial Goals Challenges Traditional Organizational Designs (Capitalism Beyond Mutuality, 2018)

This book chapter argues that less-hierarchical designs, specifically democratic approaches to organizing, could have increasing relevance given the growing emphasis on social responsibility in corporations. Drawing on parallels with theories of political democracy, we argue that organizational democracy’s ability to integrate diverse viewpoints can support the joint pursuit of commercial and social objectives. We proceed, first, by drawing on an extensive literature review to assess the ways in which organizational democracy has been conceptualized in recent decades, and to document the relative lack of substantive discussion about it in comparison with other alternatives to hierarchy. We then characterize the recent surge of socially engaged models of enterprise and press the case that this turning point warrants reconsideration of the merits of organizational democracy. (Co-authored with Julie Batillana and Michael Fuerstein)

How One Company Achieved a Bold Transformation—Despite Major Unknowns (Harvard Business Review, 2026)

How do you make a bold transformation, taking a leap into the unknown when there’s no clear data, no well-worn path, and no guarantee of success? What if the change you’re considering is uncharted territory, but you know waiting for certainty means standing still? A five-year study of a leading pharmaceutical company’s transformation uncovered four decision-making traps and corresponding advice on the critical leadership shifts needed to move forward with conviction (Co-authored with Chengyi Lin).

The Challenges of Becoming a Less-Hierarchical Company (Harvard Business Review, 2024)

More and more organizations are looking to create flatter, less hierarchical models to increase collaboration, agility, and employee empowerment. But recent research at a food processing company in Colombia outlines some stumbling blocks companies might face when trying to change their structure. Specifically, the researchers and company CEO highlight a series of structural and people dynamics leaders should look out for in their own efforts (Co-authored with Eric Anicich and Juan Pablo Sanchez Celi)

How Companies Are Using Tech to Give Employees More Autonomy (Harvard Business Review, 2022)

While automation is the purest form of decentralization, rather than automating frontline workers, technology’s best use might be to automate the functions of management, especially middle management (e.g., coordination, accountability, direction, and governance). If technology is going to make something redundant, why not replace those things we currently don’t like — such as overly matrixed coordination, red tape bureaucratic processes, command-and-control decision-making (by people who don’t have the best data to make the decisions), and antiquated compliance approaches — rather than those we do (like our human colleagues)? (Co-authored with Ethan Bernstein and Joost Minnaur)

Beyond the Holacracy Hype: The Overwrought Claims - and Actual Promise - of the Next Generation of Self-Managed Teams (Harvard Business Review, 2016)

Holacracy and other forms of self-organization have been getting a lot of press. Proponents hail them as "flat" environments that foster flexibility, engagement, productivity, and efficiency. Critics say they're naive, unrealistic experiments. We argue, using evidence from a multi-year research agenda at several mainstream organizations that have adopted these forms, that neither view is quite right. Although the new forms (built upon on a half-century of research on and experience with self-managed teams) can help organizations become more adaptable and nimble, most companies shouldn't adopt their principles wholesale. A piecemeal approach usually makes sense. Organizations can use elements of self-management in areas where the need for adaptability is high, and traditional models where reliability is paramount. (Co-authored with Ethan Bernstein, John Bunch and Niko Canner)